Chemical reactors, which typically include flow modules, transport a continuous flow of materials or reactants into the reactor and a continuous flow of materials or products out of the reactor. Features such as flexibility in set-up, flow configuration, mixing properties, temperature control and monitoring, residence times, are typically considered in the design of flow modules.
A number of problems to overcome when designing and building multipurpose flow modules are, for example, leakage, enabling of visual inspection, blocking of ports, cleaning of flow paths, adaptation of process flow path to get desired residence time for a given flow rate, access to process flow in the middle of the reactor, configuration of heat transfer flow, discharge of dissolved gas out of the module and mixing of fluids.
Problems often arising with construction of flow modules include leakage and soiling of dead ends and crevices formed when said fittings are mounted in the port holes of the module. Flow modules are generally described in the international patent applications PCT/SE2010/050397, WO 2007/050013 and WO 2007/073281.